When we walked into the RA meeting last Wednesday in Long Beach, the assembly was about to close its doors in executive session. In 15 years of covering the Representative Assembly, I had never heard of a closed-door session in task group preparation. All that usually entails is assigning delegates to the particular committees that will discuss the pros and cons of motions that will come before the body later, to make a recommendation that the group can either accept or reject.
As we were courteously escorted out of the room, along with everyone else who was not officially involved with the RA, I asked what was going on. (Reporters hate executive sessions. They are usually about keeping secrets the press thinks should not be kept.) So I was surprised when someone told me it had to do with an announcement that AOTA President Penny Moyers Cleveland was going to make in her presidential address on Friday. Something about a new "branding" the association was undertaking. It was meant to be an unveiling of some kind. So, ADVANCE waited, along with everyone else.
When the big day came, we learned that AOTA had adopted a new slogan, the first in more than 10 years, as I remember, that was meant to make the concept of OT "click" in the minds of the public: "Occupational Therapy. Living Life to Its Fullest."
The slogan supersedes "Occupational Therapy. Skills for the Job of Living." It is meant to associate OT in the public mindset with more than just function. Fulfillment is now the goal. The new brand is more in keeping with the context of occupational science, which sees "doing" as a first principle of human existence; that is, it is the nature of people to be active during their waking hours in activities and roles of their choosing that have meaning to them, personally. OT's job is to help them make healthy choices and undertake activities that lead to personal satisfaction in their lives.
In this context, occupational therapy goes beyond the clinic and the classroom. It goes to a lifestyle that involves a healing connection with others through participation, in all aspects of one's life.
All of this, of course, is to help set OT up for achieving the Centennial Vision, a practice model that AOTA wants to see the profession achieve by 2017. It is an undertaking that has consumed AOTA's time and resources for more than 5 years. And it means, as Cleveland states, that every OT and OTA out there needs to develop an "attitude of unreasonableness."
By that she means that you are not going to take no for an answer in any situation that is critical to your patient's welfare or your profession's future. You will need to know your stuff and be willing to go out on a limb to make what needs to happen, happen.
"We will be knocking on big doors," Cleveland told her audience. "These doors will not open by themselves, therefore we will knock loudly. We cannot practice business as usual. Knocking on these doors will take some of us out of our comfort zones."
Knocking on these big doors "means that many of us have to step up into leadership roles in our profession and in society."
Rather than looking up to our heroes, she added, "we would benefit more by looking into them, emulating them. If each one of us does our part, then many of these doors will open."
The doors she describes are the power brokers of other organizations whom OT needs to convince of its value. They include professional and consumer organizations whose goals and approaches to health intersect with ours. The doors are also those belonging to state and federal lawmakers and administrators who have the power to put us on solid footing.
In the past few years, AOTA has partnered with several such organizations in mental health and services for the aging, in particular. It will continue to pursue such partnerships. The national association is also partnering with the National Institutes of Health to revise its research agenda along the lines of national priorities in societal health issues.
"Your leadership story might be to promote the value of OT each and every time you encounter a new client and his or her family," Cleveland said of OT and OT practitioners, "reinforcing what you are bringing in terms of your knowledge, perspective and skills and most importantly, how those differ from the other professionals providing services to this client...your strategy might be to make sure your colleagues really know and understand OT...
"When OT says the impossible is possible, we are helping people live life to its fullest. We go forward with the message that living life and occupational therapy are inextricably intertwined."